an excerpt from The Mountain

He looked both ways at the road, a tangle of veins pulsing in blue relief over his throat. When he proceeded across, the rope tightened, then the coffin jerked and followed, slowly coming clear of the curb and clinking loudly over a terrain of cracked asphalt, potholes, and weeds. His brown boots were worn to the socks in places, his greasy jeans and t-shirt hanging loosely around his hunger. Pocked buildings lined the street—scaley, muted, drab—with occasional symbols, mostly reds, sprayed in youthful detail over what used to be entrances or exits. Trash littered the sidewalks, and sometimes hung, caught in the branches of bald trees. Dead birds and fish had been swept up into the gutters, nearly spilling over the curbs, onto the gray slabs. The scent, simultaneously floral and putrid, was marked with the rabid feel of material teeth. A general sense of itinerant decay imbued the horizon, as lightning sparked and fissured clouds, which metastasized in great gray clumps to the north.

At the outskirts of the city, he crossed over a barren field, crunching over a carpet of dead locusts, toward an old farmhouse, as the night came on. At the handrail, he girded himself and pulled the coffin up the steps, onto the porch, maneuvered it through the front door, and lit a candle on the kitchen table. He poured stale water from the pitcher on the counter into a dirty glass and drank it down, then sat at the table and loosened the noose around his neck. The flame licked its light across the cracked windowpanes. He took a crumpled half package of saltine crackers from his pocket, unwrapped it, took two out, placed one on the table before him, and held the other in his hand. He knocked on the coffin twice, cracked the lid an inch or two, slid the cracker through the dark gap, then lowered it. He brushed salt and crumbs from the table as he sucked his cracker and pushed it around in his mouth with his tongue, slowly stirring it into mush, before swallowing. His eyes reflected the flamelight as he looked down on the coffin.

“It appears it’s done.”

...

“I said it appears it’s done.”

...

“Do you think it’s as it was intended?”

...

“I said do you think it’s as it was intended?”

...

“But how could we have known?”

...

“No, no. I don’t think so.”

...

“I said no. I don’t think so.”

...

“What do you make of the symbols?”

...

“On the buildings. The red ones.”

...

“I said the symbols. The red ones on the buildings. What do you make of them?”

...

“Me too. That’s what I was thinking.”

...

“I said that’s what I was thinking.”

...

“I didn’t think it would rain for a while. After all that.”

...

“At least hold off for a month or two.”

...

“Don’t you hear it? It’s raining again.”

...

“Doesn’t matter.”

...

“But we were told to wait until we’re given a signal.”

...

“I said we were told to wait.”

Sweat clung to his face, yet the room was cooling. He refilled the glass with the water from the pitcher and tapped the rim with a calloused thumb. All these months later, the walls were still swollen with flood, the paint peeling, as the night yawned through the open door.

“Thank you.”

...

“I said thank you.”

...

“For the water.”

...

He drank again.

“Not much more than a desert.”

...

“I said it’s not much more than a desert out there, is it?”

,,,

“Yes. The seasons.”

...

“What do you mean?’

...

“We’ll eventually freeze to death?”

...

“I said, we’ll eventually freeze to death?”

...

“No, that’s what you said.”

...

“I said it, too.”

...

“I said it. But I said it back to you.”

...

“I said I said it. But back to you, as a question.”

...

“We aren’t going to freeze to death.”

...

“I said we are not going to freeze to death.”

...

“I’m getting tired.”

...

“I said I’m getting tired.”

...

“You don’t mind?”

...

“Really?”

A bit embarrassed, he stretched himself, carmine, over the lid of the coffin, as though he were a puddle of flesh, spreading, and closed his eyes. The night melted into smoke, the candlelight drowning in the sadistic fat of its own warmth.

A thudding woke him in the pitch black. He could scarcely make out the open door. He tightened the rope and sat upright on the coffin. Another thud, way in the distance. He stood and walked toward the doorway, the coffin scratching across the floor behind him.

Outside, the sky had been forged into granite, not a seep of light, and, though the rain had stopped, the air was still cold. The crunching of the locusts underfoot helped him keep count of his steps, even through the hiss the coffin made of their skins, as the thudding got louder. Where one might expect the sound of a bird in the early morning darkness, there were none, for the birds had drowned, after falling, starved and fatigued, into the once swollen ocean of the world, where they flapped like beached fish until they sank—their skins shrunken into mummies when the drying was done.

Briefly, as he walked, something shifted; the sky could have been pierced with needles, the way the stars lit up, and at his feet, beneath the thuds, there lay a muffled entreaty, a voice, a woman.

“Ma, is that you?”

...

“Ma?”

He got to his knees, as though genuflecting, and began to dig with his hands. After pulling up chunks of wood and roots and bones, he found an old empty soup can. His fingers crept over it seeingly, but it kept getting stuck in mid-air, about a foot from the soil. Discovering that there was a string attached, he noticed a vibration when he touched it. The string, now wrapped around his finger, dug into his skin as he pulled it through the soil. Finally, it stopped moving, that stubborn worm, his finger throbbing. The rope tightened around his neck as he knelt to meet the can to his ear. Then he moved his mouth toward its sharp, rusty teeth.

“Is it really you?”

Again, he held the can to his ear: the roaring of a waving ocean. Then, putting the can down, he looked back at the coffin.

“I think I found Ma.”

...

“I said I think I found Ma.”

...

“I’m pretty sure.”

...

“I said I’m sure. I’m pretty sure it’s her.”

...

“I don’t know. I think she’s saying help.”

...

“I said I don’t know. I think she’s saying help. Hold on, I’ll check.”

He put the can back to his ear, the teeth grazing his skin, then set it back down.

“Yes, she’s saying help.”

...

“I said yes, she’s saying help.”

...

“I don’t know. I need a shovel.”

...

“I don’t have the answers to your inquisition.”

...

“Yes. I said that. I don’t know. That’s what I said. And that I need a shovel.”

...

“No, no. It’s too dark. She said she could wait.”

...

“I said she said she could wait.”

...

“Until we have the light to find a shovel.”

...

“We need light. She said she can wait until we get it.”

The sky went black again. He counted his steps back to the farmhouse, pulled the coffin up the steps, onto the porch, and waited for some kind of light to come.

A fuzzy, TV-like glow woke him. Lifting his heavy head from the coffin, it cranked almost mechanically toward the barn, where the gray light burned cold behind it. With a yawn, he stood, tightened the rope around his neck, and pulled the coffin down a craggy trinity of stairs. Unlatching the barn door, he could hear the muffled sounds of the voice in the distance, and, snatching a rusty shovel off the ground, hurriedly made it into the field. The can was right where they’d left it among the insect-skins and desiccated feathers, anchored to the earth by a fragile piece of twine.

Kneeling, he brushed the dirt off the can.

“You still there, Ma?”

He held the can to his ear, shook his head, then put it back up close to his chapped lips, a little pearl of blood showing in a crack on the bottom one.

“Ma? You still in there?”

Desperately clenching the shovel with his dry left hand, he hollered frantically into the can, and, not hearing nor feeling the vibrations of a response creep up through the impatient fingers of his right hand, he shot upright, the rope gaining nails in his skin, and began to dig.

After some time, working carefully not to cut the string, he hit something hard, was able to lean into the hole and dig the rest of it out with his hands. He reeled the string around his finger

and let the object dangle before his face like some strange, outsized fishing lure. It was an urn, deeply oxidized, with a thin crust of salt around it.

“Ma? You still there?”

Looking toward the coffin: “Just hold on a minute. No! I’m not talking to you.”

Shaking the urn: “Ma? You hear me?”

“Ma? Ma, can you hear me? You in there?”

“Ma!”

...

His eyes suddenly widened and he put the can back to his lips.

“Good grief! Just sleeping! I thought you were dead!”

...

“Hold on, Ma, yeah, just a second. Hey, could you give me a minute! I’m talking with Ma!”

...

“I said I’m talking with Ma!”

...

“No, Ma, sorry. No, no. I’m sorry. I was talking to Pa.”

...

“Alright, alright, just a sec. Just give me a second.”

He unscrewed the lid, pulled a cracker from his pocket, put it into the urn, and screwed the lid back on.

“Ration, Ma, ration. We’ve got a long way to go. Yes. A really long way to go. And there’s only a few left.”

...

“No, no. I was talking to Ma. I said I was talking to Ma. I told her we have a long way to go.

...

“I said I told her we have a long way to go.”

He wrapped the string around his neck in such a way that the can and urn clinked together against his chest as he walked, and as he approached the barn, he thought about how they might be the last of their kind, the rope, the string—all of it, all things, really.

He found a burlap bag and filled it with whatever he might find useful: a small gasoline can, still containing a cup or two, half-buried in the dirt; a few rags; a fixed-blade knife in an old worn sheath.

...

“We got our signal.”

...

“I said we got our signal.”

...

“Ma was the signal.”

For days, he went north through flatlands, his skin blistering under the bulb of the sun and inside the rub of his shoes, his eyes often chasing wavy lines taking off from the ground in front of him, until he discovered a mountain top, still miles, days, and nights away, which shined like needlepoint held up by dark clouds, glinting silvery in the layman light. They stopped for a few days under the shade of some trees. He fed the coffin and the urn the last of the crackers, then packed up and continued toward the mountain. The days waned to cool nights, the nights into hot dry endless days, but the snow at the peak, the ice and rocks, cold as dead palms, promised fresh water, so he went on, the rope and string rubbing together, tightening, a saintly burn against the toiled flesh.

Often, he’d see railroad tracks, tracks that had perhaps once spanned rivers, disfigured by the now-gone ocean, useless as giant untouched piano keys. They lay there like the spine of some strange mother, wood and steel that had once guided men into new frontiers, away from a destruction she had known and endured and would endure again, forever, and into a new destruction born of a broken rib. The journey could be seen right there, in that living fossil, the everchanging face, in the dirt and the sand, the twisted railways, the craters, and the storms that populated her skin. The trees stood straight up, windless, like the hairs of a scared cat, as he muscled on, body thinning, into the smalling horizon.

“We’re almost there.”

...

“I said we’re almost there.”

...

“No! Stop! Don’t call her that.”

...

“I said don’t call her that! She’s not slowing us down!”

...

“No! I'm talking to Pa!”

...

“I said I’m talking to Pa! We’re not talking about you, Ma! Promise.”

...

“I said I promise we’re not talking about you!”

...

“Pa! Stop! You had the last cracker!”

They quieted their bickering, and a silence filled him up, weighted him, as though everything inside him had been replaced with sand, heavy at first, then the days and nights passed without him noticing, trudging along, carrying that weight, then he arrived, lighter, as though the wind had scattered the beaches inside him and reconstituted them at the foothills of the mountain, and only then, there, becoming aware of his feet, aware that he even had any, finally realizing he’d been moving all along, because of a sound, the sound of his weight, and theirs, crunching loudly over a mound of snow-powdered crab shells, and their voices suddenly erupting, volleying back and forth, Ma’s and Pa’s, a claw sticking out from under the sole of his shoe, the noise, the cacophony, obscuring his view of the peak.

“Will both of you shut up! It was me, Ma! It was me, Pa!

...

“I said it was me, Ma!”

...

“Yes! Me!”

...

“No, no. It was me, Pa!”

...

“I said it was me!”

...

“I said I said it was me!”

...

“Quiet down!”

...

“I woke both of you up!”

...

“I said I woke both of you up!”

...

“I’m taking you.”

...

“I said I’m taking you!”

...

“What do you mean where?”

...

“I said what do you mean where!”

...

“Please.”

...

“Please!”

...

“Just go back to sleep!”

They fell back asleep as he climbed, leaving the sounds of the crabs behind them. The rope tightened, pulling his head back, jerky, as he rose up into the clouds. His feet were often lost in the footholds, as though the mountain were pulling them in, and even though he was looking down at them, at his feet, and knew they were there, he couldn’t see them, just felt a rising motion, a pushing away, a sucking in. The urn bounced over his chest, inculcating bruises, and the rope burned his skin, but so long as he was moving, floating, bringing them with him, he didn’t mind the myriad thoughtless discomforts of motion.

Then it started, another welcome discomfort, a warm rain, that melted the powder snow. The shells and feathers of the carrion, like boats, drifted up, floating—so many things started floating, the crabs, the birds, the branches, the air, shallow at first, but eventually the wood vertebrae of the steel spine floated up too, even though it was still being held down in spots by the weight of the tracks and the railroad spikes. He opened his mouth and drank, just drops, mist even, as he climbed higher, hoping they would accumulate eventually into a full swallow. Then, abruptly, the rain stopped, everything was quiet, and the water ran down the hard earth and was gone. And the little that was left in his mouth, that he had caught, thinly lubricated his throat, trickling into him like a weak, virginal spring. A cold wind blew over his sweaty skin and the snow started falling. He coughed: a single note of song in that near-gone epoch. His throat wrestled a minute with the minnow. He spat it against the granite and looked at it briefly as it struggled to swim. Then he continued to climb, ascending. His head was as light as smoke, and his limbs tingled, staticky to the bones, the top of his skull burning under the sun.

After a few days of climbing and sleeping on random and various overhangs, they finally made it into a cleave toward the top, positioned there between smallish, identical peaks, where he found a cave. Ma and Pa had been silent for days, but he hadn’t noticed through the movements, the climbing, the jostling, the breathing.

“Pa,” he said. He banged on the coffin. “Pa!”

He banged and banged, then looked down, saw the urn against his shirt, felt the bruises in his skin, and his panic oldened the lines in his face, making them more defined yet looser.

“Ma,” he said, “Ma!”

He tapped the urn with his finger.

Nothing.

Finally, he unscrewed the lid and slowly peeked inside, but a gust blew in, and the ashes came whooshing out, and he watched, inside himself, as they sailed off on that cool lip of wind, the rims of his eyes slushing into a grayish batter. All that remained were the crackers, which he pulled out and set on the ground beside him. He sat there staring at the coffin. He stared at it for a long time, afraid to move, wiping mud-ash from his face, then he made a circular motion with his thumb about his forehead and very slowly lifted the lid. It, too, was empty, save the saltines he’d fed to it over the weeks. There weren’t even bones. His confusion was so severe, so soul-contorting, that his face looked like it was about to slack right off the bone and land in wet sodden folds before his feet. Then, after several minutes, he finally lit on something articulable. “The sacrificial," he thought. He put a cracker in his mouth, chewed, and gathered snow with the other hand. He shoved the snow into his mouth, allowed it to melt, and swallowed it down with the soggy crackers. It was just then he realized how cold he was.

He took up a rock, the size of a small feline skull, and started bashing it into the coffin. The old wood gave way quickly, then, wrapping his worn fingers around the loose, broken bits of wood, he leaned back and pulled until the pieces snapped off. He gathered some of the debris into a pile outside the mouth of the cave then carried the rest inside. Just a sprinkle of gas from the can and a match from his sock and fire erupted from the coffin pieces. The urn was placed outside the cave a few feet from the fire to gather moisture. Soon he fell asleep beside the lapping flames, but they only tucked him tight into a night of troubled dreams.

When he woke up, he found himself crawling around inside the cave in near-total darkness.

As the rough floor cut into his shins, his head continually bumped into rocks, and it never occurred to him that he was going in the wrong direction. Eventually, he gave up, and collapsed in tears, realizing just how alone he was now, his cheek coming to rest on the damp floor, eyes closing to the pop and hiss and warmth of the fire, that he could neither see nor feel but only faintly smell, as its smoke sucked into the mountain, brushing lightly across its many mineral-rich veins and becoming barely a rustling in his nose hairs, but he sensed it, pictured its warmth, and let the image cradle him through the darkness. When he woke again, he felt the morning light upon his skin, a warmth creeping through the cave opening, the fire smoldering at his side, and he didn’t know the difference, which warmth he felt first, when he opened his eyes. And he didn’t question how he’d gotten there.

He yawned, stretched his arms, and stood, smoke combing across his face, then stumbled over and threw a few more boards on the coals. Weak, trembling, tired, alone; he found his way to the urn, I’m dying, and reached down for a sip of the now boiling snow, the remnants of body-ash slushy along the rim. Immediately, he retracted his touch, scalded by the very thing that would keep him, fingers blooming white oozing sores in the morning light. A Saltine, almost blackened, next to some coals, he flicked into the cold outer rim, into the snow, then retrieved before it had fully cooled, pushed it around in his mouth, broke it up with his tongue, and swallowed back all the saliva it had materialized.

A downy-soft breeze fell on his cheek, and he felt its weight, lighter than him, but more violent, as he walked over to the unseen side of the mountain, looking down at his feet, then into the valley, the toes of his boots framing the greenery below, then, to the left, just outside that frame, he noticed little clouds of sheep flanking the slope. He spent all day walking down, gaining, with each step, a hopeful breath, life, but when he got to the flock, he started wheezing, and fell to the ground, and all the warmth went out of him. At his presence, the sheep were timid, but, when they finally thought he had died, they came closer and huddled around him, becoming a large blur of shrubbery to stave the wind.

After his breath was breathed back into him, the sheep scattered nervously, like shreds of paper, and when he finally stood and started back up to camp, clumps of them, light as clouds, silently scraped their hooves against the floor of the uncertain earth.

That night they stayed outside the cave, grazing on the edelweiss that had pushed its hard-won blooms through the powdery snow, while he fed coffin boards to the fire. Every now and again he would pick up the old soup can, look it over, put it to his lips and say “Ma,” then take another drink from the urn.

He gathered what was left of the edelweiss, brushed off the snow, made a small pillow of the petals and foliage, and as tired as he was, as hard as he tried, as much as his tired body wrestled with his tired mind, he couldn’t fall asleep. The shadows danced around the cave lasciviously, shapes that were lost to him, yet there they were projected against the cave walls, growing and moving, in total freedom, because they were the forms of his inmost forgotten desires. Beautiful women twisted with men, equally beautiful, in the flickering flame-light, and, after hours of shadow play, of watching them, his muscles tightened as he lurched away, spilling his energy, just a few jerky globs, before the fire, briefly becoming part of that orgy of flame and night, then, weakly, he crawled back to the wilting edelweiss, rolled flat on his back, and closed his eyes. When he decided to dream, he said to himself, “Sleep,” then folded fetus-like and slept like the dead, as if he had become a stone himself, inside the mountain.

Embarrassed and hungry when he awoke the next day, he rolled onto his side, pushed himself up with his elbows and got to his feet. His stomach groaned as he sat on a boulder and wiped away at the stains on his jeans. He saw the sheep going down the slope, but the littlest was still asleep, just like he had been, with its head resting on flowers. He made a noise to wake it, but by the time it opened its eyes, the herd was out of sight. Groggily, it stood and quickened its step. It let out a little bleat then turned and saw him sitting there, scraping his fingernails across his pantlegs. Slowly, it came up close, scent of pasture lifting off cool, wet wool, and nuzzled his knees. He patted its side, and said, “I’m sorry they left, but look, I’m here, yes, I’m here to protect you now.” Then, stroking the underside of the face, he gently pushed its head up and cut a moon across its throat. The blood spread over the rock as soft and silent as the falling snow. He listened to it trickle for a moment. Then he sheathed the knife, put a cracker in his mouth, and started down the other side of the mountain.

Read an interview with Troy James Weaver here.